Vins de Foresta is a micro-cellar located in the Arboçar, 300 meters above the sea level at Massis del Garraf, whitin the province of Barcelona. Foresta wines are organic non certified but cultivated according to the guidelines of organic farming. Their vineyards develop a sustainable quality work method respectful with the terroir, reflecting in a remarkable difference with other wines. They have Sumoll, Marselan and Xarel.lo varieties.

FORESTA

MASSIS DEL GARRAF

Vins de Foresta is a micro-cellar located in the Arboçar, 300 meters above the sea level at Massis del Garraf, neighboring The Alt Penedès and Garraf counties. It’s an area with a specific microclimate, with a big Mediterranean influence.

Lluis Carsí and Joan Olivella are in charge of Foresta winery. Their transverse viticultural philosophy, honest and sincere, goes from keeping the landscapes, the architecture and the native varietals environment. Emphasizing land work and implementing changes from traditional to ecological agriculture with some biodynamic touches. This is how they obtain vineyards where they develop a sustainable quality in order to get terroir wines, reflecting in a remarkable difference with other wines.

The property is formed by a growing area with several native varietals from the Penedès area and some other new implementations, and an area of mountains with native Mediterranean forests. Shallow soil, poor in organic matter with variable clay levels on top of a limestone permeable layer, with a good capacity of moisture retention gives a low grape production but with high concentration.

Xarel.lo is a native variety of Catalonia and stands out as one of Spain’s finest white-wine varieties. Foresta wines made out of Xarel.lo has achieved a wonderful acid structure. Each vintage gives specific characteristics worth a try. Sumoll is a rather old, odd variety. Despite being native to the region of Catalonia, it was disregarded in general. It’s a pretty tough grape to vinify and it’s very easy to make a bad wine from Sumoll. Adventurous souls like Joan and Lluis have been trying to reclaim the grape as of late to claim back their heritage. Their Sumoll wine is a pale garnet, rose rim that has notes of raspberries and other typical red fruits of their terroir. Marselan is a curious beast originally created as a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache. Coming across a wine of 100% Marselan is a bit rare and even more rare is coming across one that’s excellent. Joan and Lluís have seemingly breached the quality barrier with this wine and are making an extremely tasty wine down in Penedès, albeit outside the DO. It’s an incredibly fine curiosity wine worth tasting as it will be like nothing you expect it to be and that is the awesome sauce of wine these days.

Foresta wines are organic non certified but cultivated according to the guidelines of organic farming. The vineyards are organically treated and hold the organic certification.

NEWS

VINTAGE REPORT

The weather in the Massis del Garraf county for the vintage year 2016 was very dry, with very little rainfall on average. There was rain but it fell during periods when the grapes could not fully exploit the moisture. We are fortunate because we are close to the Mediterranean Sea. It gives us some extra moisture that is absolutely necessary. However the stress of the low rainfall decreased the production of some varieties by up to 35%.

So that the desired phenolic maturity could be reached, extraordinary actions had to be employed to help the vines. In some cases we did extra ploughing and in the most extreme scenario, the plants were watered. At one point, we found that the grape’s ripening process was interrupted since the vines did not have enough capacity to achieve the desired level of maturity. The decision was made to reduce the burden for each vine so grapes on the ground (20%) were pulled to help the plants.

It has been a good year to determine how native varieties (Xarel·lo, Sumoll) compared with foreign varieties; the native varieties measured up well. Production of the first grapes showed a decrease of only 15% but the produced a very balanced grape despite the increase of the degree. Organoleptically, secondary aromas prevail over the primary ones. Wines have increased their volume by an average of 1º.